Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXI. Hother and Balder

This is a chapter from Donald A. Mackenzie's 1912 retelling of Germanic and Norse mythology, drawing primarily on Saxo Grammaticus's *Gesta Danorum* rather than the Eddic tradition — presenting the gods not as purely divine beings but as powerful demigods contending on roughly human terms. The central narrative follows Hother, a heroic mortal youth, who competes with the god Balder for the love of Nanna: warned by prophetic wood-maidens, he embarks on a quest to the underworld-adjacent lair of the wood satyr Miming to steal the only sword capable of wounding the otherwise invulnerable Balder. Armed with this weapon, Hother defeats an alliance of gods in open sea-battle, actually severing Thor's war-club and routing Odin and Balder's forces, before winning Nanna as his wife. The text is distinctive for its euhemerized treatment: the gods bleed, flee, fall sick with lovesickness, and suffer military defeat at mortal hands, stripping away the transcendent aura typical of Eddic accounts. The excerpt ends with the conflict unresolved — Hother later losing battles and retreating into melancholy exile — setting up Balder's eventual death and Odin's revenge. Readers drawn to variant, lesser-known mythological traditions or the intersection of heroic saga and divine myth will find this more novelistic and morally ambiguous than standard retellings.

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXI. Hother and Balder

Related pages View as graph →